How can I make a graph with irregular time/date intervals on the x-axis?

Question

I have a data set that has values for a set of dates, but these dates don't have a regular interval (i.e. 1 Feb., 3 Feb., 15 Feb., 5 March) . So my question is: is there a package or other method to plot this easily?

Answer 1

A possible approach is the pgfplots package with the dateplot library.

Here is an example with fictitious data and the dates you provided in the question:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
\pgfplotsset{compat=1.7} % with TeXLive updated this is the current version; use the one you have installed
\usepgfplotslibrary{dateplot}
\usepackage{filecontents}% to generate fictitious data
\begin{filecontents}{data.dat}
date incoming
2012-02-01 1500
2012-02-03 1275
2012-02-15 1480
2012-03-03 1600
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}    
\begin{tikzpicture}
\begin{axis}[
  date coordinates in=x,
  xtick={data},
  xticklabel={\day.\month},
  xticklabel style={rotate=-45,font=\footnotesize},
  xlabel={2012},
  stack plots=y,
  yticklabel={\pgfmathprintnumber{\tick}\$},
  ylabel=Total incoming,
  ylabel style={yshift=10pt},
]
\addplot table[x=date,y=incoming] {data.dat};
\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}    
\end{document}

The result:

For further details refer to section 4.20.2 Dates as Input Coordinates of the pgfplots manual.